Pop! Go the Buttons
by ObscureAnimeWriter
Summary: OneShot. “Don’t you want me to take my shirt off?” Wow, now that was a loaded question. mild IshiHime.


**Title: **Pop! Go the Buttons  
**Disclaimer: **If I owned any anime, any anime at all, the nerd would ALWAYS get his day (month, year, century, millennium...all times infinity).  
**Rating:** PG ( K+ ) – for mild nudity, a bit of sexual confusion, and the misdirection of Ishida's blood flow.  
**Spoilers:** If you didn't know all of this stuff about Ishida and Orihime and read this fic KNOWING that you don't know anything about them, _SHAME_! Shame on you!

**Summary:** OneShot. "Don't you want me to take my shirt off?" Wow, now _that _was a loaded question. IshiHime.

* * *

Somehow, he had always expected it to be pink. Not that he thought about those kind of things – of course not! – but he knew the color suited her and, if he HAD ever thought about those kinds of things, then he, most likely, would have come to that color as a conclusion. He had expected the little ribbons too – in his never-entertained fantasies – because they, too, seemed to suit her. (The lack of lace rather disturbed him, though.)

The only thing he _hadn't_ expected was to ever witness it_ personally_. (And to babble on so pathetically if he did.)

Oh, why hadn't he ever taken the time to indulge in the fantasy he never had before? Never. Nope, not ever...but he wished he had, for fashions sake, at least.

"Ishida-kun?"

Ishida Uryuu lifted his eyes away from his classmate's cleavage at the concerned muttering of his own name. With a hard cough that didn't quite dislodge the squeak from his voice, he replied "Y-yes, Inoue-san?"

Inoue Orihime – full-figured teenage goddess to the entire male population of Japan, battle-ready ally, and occasional delusional case study for the psychology department of Tokyo University – stood before him, clinging to the inadequately secured uniform shirt that had, once again, failed to contain her famous curves. One, two, _three _buttons had popped this time, flying in random opposite directions, leaving her bare flesh unprotected against cold drafts. Her baby-pink bra with the minuscule, rose-centered ribbons was exposed as the last stitch of fabric between herself and her modesty, though not nearly ample enough in surface area to disengage the imagination of the teenage Quincy.

This was _exactly_ why Ishida preferred zippers.

"Are you alright?" she leaned over – perhaps not the best course of action considering the _delicate_ situation at hand – and peered into Ishida's eyes. "You're all red."

Ishida fought against the urge to look down, and lost miserably. That sweet little pink bra (which was filled with an unnecessary amount of padding, if only to give her a bit of extra support) perfectly defined the term "wonder bra." Why, she deserved to have a gigantic embroidered S on each cup to signify how absolutely "super" her powers of seduction could be.

"Ishida-kun?"

"Yes?" Ishida redirected his wandering eyes from Orihime's superior developments to her face, seeming almost startled that there was anything in the world – much less on her body – than what filled that itty-bitty pink bra. "Oh...ah, I'm fine, Inoue-san."

If Ishida had believed her capable of such an intent, he would have thought the way she tilted her head at him was a suspicious gesture. More than likely, she thought the unnaturally bright tint to Ishida's face was symptomatic of illness and the preoccupation that fell beyond the realm of their conversation was product of the fever's delirious hold on his mind.

But, just in case...

After a long pause, Ishida adjusted his firmly situated glasses, turning his head fully away from Orihime as he added, "I was thinking. I apologize."

"Oh," was her simple acceptance of Ishida's lie.

Ishida felt the compulsion to squirm as he added up his tally of things to feel guilty about. (Quite a list was already...erm...growing.)

The unfortunate, socially excluded Quincy had been most startled when Orihime had burst into the classroom during his usually solitary lunch period, cheerfully calling for his services to come to her aid. The scantily-clad princess had even called him her "knight in shining glasses" in order to appeal to him for help. She fluttered her delicate lashes at him, hands pressed together in an innocently humble gesture, and begged him to reattach the buttons to her gaping blouse.

With such sweet manners and dire threat to his reputation as a gentleman, how could any self-respecting sewing expert deny such a request...?

"A-are you sure you need me to mend your blouse for you, Inoue-san?" he asked with false humility. "You seem capable enough at club meetings..."

If Ishida wasn't mistaken, a little blush rose to Orihime's cheeks. "Eh heh...thank you, Ishida-kun. I don't bring my sewing kit to school unless we have club, though, so..."

"Ah...," Normally, he would chastise someone for being so ill-prepared for a handicraft emergency, but he couldn't bring himself to do so when such a pretty girl smiled at him. Instead, Ishida tugged on the knot of his tie, considering how to proceed without tripping over his own tongue. "I t-think we should get started, then. Lunch will be over soon and everyone will return to the classroom."

"Right!" the buxom girl agreed, flashing an exuberant smile; Ishida flushed in shame and smitten fantasy. Orihime wasted no more time in lowering her hands to the final two buttons on her shirt, fiddling with the small plastic devices that held the lower half of her top closed.

The dark-haired, rosy-cheeked destroyer squealed like a little girl and pulled her hands away from the fastenings by the wrists. "Wh-what are you doing?"

Orihime blinked at him and tilted her head in that familiar curious way. "Don't you want me to take my shirt off?"

Wow, now _that _was a loaded question.

"N-no!" the flustered Ishida exclaimed. In hindsight, he decided, that had been a stupid thing to say. "Ah...wh-what I meant was that p-perhaps you should do that in the bathroom."

"Oh...," she nodded her head in understanding. "Okay, Ishida-kun! I'll be back in a minute!"

As she danced out of the classroom, Ishida slumped into his seat with a dramatic hand over his eyes, feeling faint and exhausted. Inoue Orihime was bad for someone with low blood pressure...

The distressed Shinigami-hater leaned back in his chair, resting his head against the desktop behind him as he allowed his eyes to drift closed. Behind the dark shade of his eyelids, his often-denied fantasy featuring his buxom classmate played out in slow motion, allowing Ishida to savor every imagined moment with her. Bonding over the pattern of a frilly dress, intended only for her...discovering unconfessed feelings for one another...leaning in for that first, sweet, succulent ki –

"I'm back, Ishida-kun!"

Ishida jumped back into a sitting position, bashing his knee on the underside of his desk in the process. Before he could even think to express pain, however, his blood pressure spiked again.

Orihime stood before him...

...shirtless.

— — —

"Ishida-kun?" the Quincy opened his eyes in response to his name. Everything spun and swirled around him and he regretted doing so. "Ishida-kun? Are you alright? Should I go get the nurse?"

"I...Inoue-san...?" Ishida lifted his head, searching for the source of the voice that sounded so far away. The heavy fuzz settled on his brain inhibited his motor functions, making even this simple motion a chore.

Orihime lowered her face on level with Ishida's, holding onto the edge of his desk to keep her upright. Her amber eyes swam with concern as she addressed him again, "Are you okay, Ishida-kun? You fainted..."

"Eh...?" Dizziness, slight headache, weird fuzzy feeling...yeah, sounded about right. "I...I'm fine, Inoue-san...what happened?"

Orihime leaned back on her haunches and put a thoughtful finger to her chin. "I don't know...I came into the classroom and you just fell over! Did the duck-gnomes get to you? They nearly got me last night while I was sleeping, but they couldn't make me pass out because I was already asleep! 'Course, I don't know how I knew they were there..."

Memory flooded back to Ishida, more from her new position than her outlandish conspiracy theory of hybrid "dnomes" seeking to steal his "inner purity" (whatever that meant). With his face flat against the surface of his desktop, he had a clear view of Orihime in all of her shirtless glory, unabashedly babbling on in her little pink bra.

"Ishida-kun?" the magical, fairy-wielding schoolgirl leaned forward again to look into Ishida's painfully-widened eyes. "Ee! Did they get to you again, Ishida-kun? Stay away from the mushrooms! _Stay **away** from the mushrooms_!"

In effort to make her stop shaking him (and, thus, causing her generous bosom to bounce and jiggle), Ishida sat up and grabbed her hands again, averting his eyes as far away from his classmate as possible. "I'm fine, Inoue-san...ah, may I ask why you're not w-w-wearing a s-shirt?"

"Eh? You told me to take it off in the bathroom."

"I meant for you to put another one on!"

"Oh," Orihime pondered this a moment. "But I don't have another one. Do you bring all your clothes to school, Ishida-kun? I have so many that I have to leave them at home!"

Ishida allowed this concept to sink in for a moment as a comically large drop of sweat slid down the back of his head.

"Inoue-san...," the boy paused. Orihime gave him that curious look again. "Don't you...have a change of gym clothes, or something?"

"Nope! I lost them."

"You lost your gym clothes...?"

"Yep! I think the dnomes carried them off while I wasn't looking...quadratic equations are just so absorbing, don't you think?"

He couldn't say that he did, but that was beside the point. His buxom classmate was standing in front of him, half nude, and Ishida was running out of options for how to remedy this.

"Ah-_choo_!"

Ishida looked up without thinking and – though he didn't quite regret it – blushed when his gaze landed on the barely-clad Orihime. He couldn't look away, however, with the way she had her arms wrapped around her torso and shivered in the chill of the classrooms air conditioning. "Inoue-san...are you cold?"

"Eh?" Orihime blinked and ceased rubbing heat into her bare skin. She drew her arms away from her body and waved away the implication with her hands. "No, no! I'm fine, Ishida-kun."

The ginger-haired girl sneezed again and Ishida decided that he didn't believe her.

The young Hollow slayer – ever-so-chivalrous, just as his grandfather had taught him – loosened his tie and tossed it to the side before unzipping his school shirt in a singular, smooth motion. "Here," Ishida insisted, pulling the garment away from his bare shoulders. "Put this on."

"No, no! Ishida-kun, I can't take your shirt! What will _you_ wear?" Orihime tried to protest, pushing the offered clothing away and back towards its owner.

Ishida pushed back, forcing the doctored cotton into his classmates hands. "It's more prudent for me to go around without a shirt than you, Inoue-san. Please, put it on."

"But..."

The half-naked boy fixed his sharply-curved classmate with his most severe look. "Please."

"Aa...," Orihime finally agreed, brushing against Ishida's fingers with her own as she accepted his offering. A light blush stained her cheeks. "Thank you, Ishida-kun."

"It was nothing."

— — —

Meanwhile, a group of four male students ventured to complete their dawdling journey from lunch back to academia. Each was infamous in his own right on the campus of Karakura High, but their combined powers of oddity gave them unrivaled attention and speculation from the rest of the student body. The largest and supposedly slowest member of their troupe – following their general fashion of almost deliberately deviating from the societal norms that others expected them to follow, even if these particular norms also happened to be a deviation from the standard set – was surprisingly eager to return to the haven of learning in interest of retrieving his notes from the previous class period. What sort of fancy Sado Yasutora found in quadratic equations, only the likes of himself and a few other borderline genius/insanity candidates could say.

"Ugh...do we really _have_ to go back to class?" Asano whined, dragging his feet slowly in the direction of their shared classroom. His three classmates followed quietly behind, each silently hoping to avoid association with the strangest amongst them. "Occhi-sensei probably won't care anyway."

"You're just gonna go sleep on the roof," accused Kurosaki Ichigo – surprisingly on campus himself, both body and soul – with point-blank disapproval. "You might as well go to class and sleep there. At least Occhi won't notice."

Chad grunted in agreement.

Mizuiro laughed and shook his head at his forlorn friend. "Yeah, Kagine-sensei always checks the roof after lunch is over. Remember the last time you got caught up there...?"

Asano shivered; Yes, he remembered.

"Then we'll leave campus. C'mon, who's with me?" Asano, suddenly energized, pumped an eager fist in the air.

"I'll pass," Ichigo grumbled.

Chad grunted again.

"Sorry, I've got to try and keep my grades up or my parents won't let me go to that 'Beach Babes' photo shoot in Tahiti next month. My girlfriend will be pissed if I tell her I can't go...," Mizuiro grinned in faux-sheepishness. "She's self-conscious about doing her first assignment in the nude and wants me there for moral support."

Nobody even flinched at the twin rivers of tears that coursed down Asano's face. "You...you...," there weren't even any words for how unfair his life was in comparison! "AUGH! It's not fair! How come everything good happens to _you guys_?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Asano?" the scowling carrot-top snapped, losing his flimsy patience. "My life ain't a walk in the park like you probably think."

"Oh, right, Ichigo! You're a bigger chick-magnet than Mizuiro!" the emotional boy wailed at the top of his lungs, grabbing onto Ichigo's shirt desperately. He began shaking the irate substitute Shinigami with his usual brand of overzealous enthusiasm. "Not only do you have the beautiful and demure Rukia-chan bowing to your every whim, but you've even got the most yearned-after girl in the entire city mooning over you to the point that no one else has a chance! You - you - _playa_!"

Mizuiro sweat-dropped and swore to never describe any of his vacations to Asano ever again. The potential cost of the use of American slang in everyday conversation was just too high.

With a quick punch to the back of his friend's head, Ichigo freed himself of the clingy Asano. "What the fuck are you raving about now, idiot?"

Asano clasped an astounded hand to his heart. "You insensitive, heartless fool! Don't tell me that you have no appreciation for the beauteous Orihime-chan's feelings!"

Ichigo put on his best blank expression. "...Huh?"

"You can't possibly feel nothing for Orihime-chan!" Asano was now gesturing wildly to emphasize his point. "No honestly heterosexual male can resist her charms! It's impossible! As impossible as...as...," he struggled to think of the most outlandish concept known to mankind. "As Orihime-chan dating someone like _Ishida_ instead of _you_!"

"...Huh?" Ichigo blinked at his overzealous friend. "What the hell are you talking about? I don't even know Inoue that well."

"AUGH!" Asano dropped to his knees, tearing at his hair with bunched fists. "How? _How_ can Ichigo get so many hot girls without even _knowing_ about it? Do the powers that be hate me so much?"

"Yes," all parties recited simultaneously.

The emotional schoolboy halted his tearful ranting momentarily and fixed the group with a mournful glare, "...You don't have to answer so quickly, you know."

The thickening crowds surrounding the quartet of boys in the hallway didn't even bother to pause in wonder at Asano's outburst; infamous as he was within the school, it seemed like a waste of time to even ask what might be vexing him this particular time. Most assumed that he was moping over his lackluster love life (again) and continued to dawdle toward their respective classrooms before the inevitable bell incited hoards of other students to crowd the hallways with the same goal in mind. Sure, Asano _acted_ like his world was going to end, but those class three students were all a little weird and hysterical. Hell, once a boy with bleached hair had _jumped through the window _of class three from three floors down.

Come to think of it, wasn't that him next to Asano...?

A pair of second year girls inched away from Ichigo as they passed by him in the hall, racing for the staircase faster than they would have normally bothered; The guardian strawberry seemed to neither notice nor care. Tilting his head toward his short, dark-haired companion, Ichigo commented, "I think we hit him on the head too many times."

Mizuiro chuckled in a nervous titter, "I think that explanation might be a little too simple for someone like Asano, Ichigo."

Chad grunted.

"You're so cruel, all of you..." the forlorn boy on the floor sobbed.

"_Eh_? You're done already?"

Asano's ears – ever tuned to the frequency of musical female voices – twitched toward the doorway of room three. Instantly forgetting his dramatic woes, the teenage boys face perked up in a grin. "Orihime-chan!" he squealed.

Mizuiro seemed mildly interested, but the other two males didn't crack a smile at the mention of their classmates name or the indication of her close proximity. Ichigo rolled his eyes, "Here we go again..."

"Aa, finished. Is it to your satisfaction, Inoue-san?"

As the potential for innuendo began formulating conclusions in Asano's mind, his eyes widened to almost perfect circles. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed to the closed classroom door to better eavesdrop on her conversation with her male companion. "Who's she talking to? What have they been _doing_?"

"Ee!" Orihime squealed. "That's so good, Ishida-kun!"

"Th-thank you, Inoue-san...I'm glad you enjoy it so much."

Asano's jaw went slack as the identity of Orihime's conversation partner was revealed; Ishida Uryuu, resident class nerd. '_She wouldn't...not with **Ishida**_...'

"The way you moved it in and out, in and out...it was so smooth and firm!"

"Ah...it was nothing."

"You must have a lot of experience."

"Yes...I do this frequently. Very rarely at school, though."

No...they couldn't possibly be talking about what he thought they were talking about. It was all a big misunderstanding! _'Right, just a misunderstanding,' _Asano thought with a relieved sigh. _'I mean, this is Orihime-chan – virginal sex goddess – and Ishida Uryuu – Super Sewing Queen – I'm talking about here. There's no way the two could possibly hook up with each other...Hell, Ishida probably won't ever hook up with anyone. Well, maybe Ichigo...it's just not right that he rejected Orihime-chan!_'

"Well, thank you again for doing this for me, Ishida-kun. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to go all day like that! It was so frustrating!"

"Yes...I'm sure. Here," there was a short pause; Asano pressed his ear flat against the door. "You can put your shirt back on, Inoue-san."

"I'll take _this_ off and – "

_SLAM!_

"YOU FIEND!"

The pair within the otherwise empty classroom jumped at the unexpected interruption of their private conversation, finding themselves suddenly staring down the accusatory finger of one Asano Keigo. The activity between the male/female couple had ceased mid-action, leaving a recently-mended blouse suspended between them as proof of their primarily innocent dialogue.

"Eh...? Asano-kun?" Orihime was the first to speak. "Is there something wrong?"

Finding little evidence to support his previous assumption of Ishida and Orihime's fornication, Asano couldn't very well tell the girl of his dreams the truth, now could he? "Eh heh...I was...just thought, um...well, I heard a noise and was worried and...uh...," the teenaged boy, awkward enough without all the hijinks he managed to get himself into, rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and laughed away the awkward moment.

"So you deemed it necessary to remove the door from its hinges," Ishida replied in a slow, irritated drawl. Drawing his hand away from his offering to Orihime, he readjusted his ever-slipping glasses to better focus his glare through the clear lenses. "And frighten Inoue-san?"

Asano flushed in response to the accusations and puffed up his chest, opening his mouth to give the shirtless Quincy a piece of his –

Asano stopped, scolding finger pointed directly at Ishida, as he noticed something extremely...odd about the scene.

"WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR SHIRT?"

Lowering his face to hide his eyes behind the glare of his lenses, Ishida straightened his glasses again unnecessarily. Orihime glanced between her two male classmates and fiddled with the zipper on the front of her bulging top.

The forlorn boy switched his attention to the female student, but kept his finger pointed in Ishida's direction. "Orihime-chan! What has this...this _pervert_ done to you? Should I call the teacher? The _police_?"

A vein in the young Quincy's forehead twitched.

"Eh?" Orihime blinked and stumbled backwards half a step behind the bristling Ishida. "What do you mean, Asano-kun?"

Stumbling over his own feet to reach her, Asano grasped her hands between his own as if professing undying love. The dark-headed student sandwiched between them began to flush red as his blood pressure spiked for a third time. "Has he touched you? Rubbed you? Licked you? Harmed you in any way?"

"Ah...no. Ishida-kun – "

"Why, oh _why_ are you defending him, Orihime-chan?" Asano freed one of his hands to sob into the crook of his arm. "This monster doesn't deserve your beautiful forgiveness!"

The flower princess couldn't think of anything to say to that. Her excitable classmate grabbed up her hands again with more fervor.

"Why, oh why did this happen? Why, oh why – " Asano stopped himself as he caught a glimpse of the wrinkled blouse trapped between their conjoined hands. Smelled of strawberries...designed with generous proportions in mind...this was a _girls_ shirt. So that meant that the shirt Orihime was wearing was – "_Are you wearing Ishida's shirt?_"

"Y-yes...," Orihime grinned sheepishly. "I lost a few buttons and Ishida-kun agreed to sew them back on for me. He told me to put this on since I lost my gym clothes."

There was a sudden interjection between their hands and they were separated, a startled Asano stumbling back a few paces. "Since my name has been cleared," Ishida growled, firmly serving as barrier between Asano and his handicrafts teammate, "Perhaps Inoue-san should change back into her clothes now. It's nearly time for class to start."

"You...you..._nerd_!" was the best response he could come up with, accusatory finger pointed in Ishida's direction again.

Ishida waited a long moment to respond, "...you wound me."

"Ah...Ishida-kun...?"

"Change back into your clothes, Inoue-san," Ishida smiled as if he had just taken a shot of cherry cough medicine. "There's nothing to worry about."

"Oh...okay, Ishida-kun," she returned with a grin that far outstripped her classmate's. "As long as you think so, I'm sure everything will be alright!"

Orihime lifted a hand to the zipper on her front –

– Asano began to drool –

– and Ishida caught her wrist to prevent her from exposing herself to the milling crowd gathering in the doorway behind Ichigo and his companions. "You should do that in the bathroom, Inoue-san."

'_NOOOOOOOOOOO_!' Asano dropped to his knees again, making horrified gestures to whomever might be paying attention from beyond the mortal realm. '_Oh, cruel fate, how you mock me! What does Ishida have that I don't? Orihime-chan is wasted on a man who **embroiders**!_'

Orihime rapped herself in the side of the head with her free hand and giggled, "Oops! I forgot."

Ishida released her, gently lowering her hand to her side, and stepped out of her way so that she might be able to get to the door more efficiently. Orihime gave the two boys a cheery wave and skipped out of the classroom, excusing herself as she wove through the ten or fifteen students observing the scene from the door.

"Eh? Where's Orihime going?" a new voice interjected upon the sudden awkward silence. "Class starts in two minutes!"

Asano brought his attention back to the living world, passionate tears brimming on the rims of his eyelids. Arisawa Tatsuki – who was kinda cute, if a little butch – had entered the room, brow furrowed and knuckles cracking.

"Arisawa-chan!" Asano didn't have the guts to call her by her given name as he thrust himself at her, clinging to her scraped knees as he began to sob pitifully, "I swear, I didn't know! I was too late to stop him! He...and Orihime-chan...they...AUGH!"

Tatsuki planted the heel of her foot in Asano's forehead as his babbling became unintelligible, sending him sprawling backwards with little swirl-patterns usurping the surface of his eyes. "Moron...," she muttered.

"Ishida...wounded...Orihime...licking...needles...," were Asano's final words as the world closed in on him and all went black.

Tatsuki raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Sheesh, I didn't think I kicked him that hard...," she scratched the back of her head, sighing, and looked up.

A vein in her forehead twitched in rhythm with a new surge of bloodlust.

Eyes narrowed at Ishida, the National Karate Champion growled low in her throat, "What happened to your shirt?"

* * *

**Authors Note:** Thanks to TWO beta's this time, this fic came together nicely n.n MyAibou – my usual beta – provided a great deal of help with POV shifts, while debbiechan (yes, THAT debbiechan) was quite useful for content since she's far more familiar with the series (though MA is starting to get the gist through my fanfiction, I think. Hehe.)

Anyway, many thanks to you both for the help on this. And, yes, debbiechan, you're getting fanart out of this. MyAibou, I'm promising you a peachshipping oneshot within the next two weeks (so no jealousy, now).

Oh well, at least they don't expect cash n.n; (cause I have none, for future reference.)

I'm still not totally thrilled with my ending, but I did polish it up a bit...Everyone let me know what you think of it, I'm curious.

--- --- ---

Fanart for this fic can be found here: http/ s62 .photobucket .com / albums/h102 / megaminoeien / Bleach20Fanart ?actionview¤t; IshiHime3 .jpg

You can find the link to my full album (which includes fifteen Bleach pic's, plus several more from other fandoms) in my author bio. Feel free to leave me comments on them in your review and/or through PM.

— — —

_**.:ObscureAnimeWriter:.**_

– _Every nerd has his day. With Inoue Orihime, Ishida Uryuu will have an entire afterlife._


End file.
